★★★★☆Six years have passed since Mark Elder conducted Britten Sinfonia in a performance of L’enfance du Christ that captured perfectly the Beethovenian energy and oriental fragrance of Berlioz’s oratorio. The scent has changed from sandalwood to pine, but as the conductor and ensemble began their first cycle of Brahms symphonies, that energy held fast.

Here was a style located precisely between Beethoven and Mahler: smartly articulated, rhythmically flexible, unguarded in its expressivity and balanced to foreground the woodwind and brass. Here too was programming that emphasised the connection between song and symphony, composer and arranger.

Minimally tweaked for pragmatism and brightness, Britten’s 1941 arrangement of the second movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, What the Wild Flowers tell me, unfolded with elegant simplicity in performance, warmed…

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